Exploitation of Elevated Extracellular ATP to Specifically Direct Antibody to Tumor Microenvironment.

The extracellular adenosine triphosphate (ATP) concentration is highly elevated in the tumor microenvironment (TME) and remains tightly regulated in normal tissues. Using phage display technology, we establish a method to identify an antibody that can bind to an antigen only in the presence of ATP. Crystallography analysis reveals that ATP bound in between the antibody-antigen interface serves as a switch for antigen binding. In a transgenic mouse model overexpressing the antigen systemically, the ATP switch antibody binds to the antigen in tumors with minimal binding in normal tissues and plasma and inhibits tumor growth. Thus, we demonstrate that elevated extracellular ATP concentration can be exploited to specifically target the TME, giving therapeutic antibodies the ability to overcome on-target off-tumor toxicity.

A versatile method for protein-based antigen bioanalysis in non-clinical pharmacokinetics studies of a human monoclonal antibody drug by an immunoaffinity liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry.

A versatile immunoaffinity liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) method was developed to quantify the total concentration of a protein-based antigen in non-clinical pharmacokinetics (PK) studies of a human monoclonal antibody drug. The method combines using magnetic beads that have been coated with a commercial anti-human Fc region antibody to capture an immune complex of the antigen and antibody drug, with subsequent digestion and quantification of the antigen-derived tryptic peptide via LC-MS/MS. Although a typical immunoassay or an immunoaffinity LC-MS/MS assay requires an antigen-specific antibody that uses a different epitope from the antibody drug, this method requires only a commercial anti-human Fc region antibody. The method was applied to quantify total receptor activator of nuclear factor-κB ligand (RANKL) in the presence of denosumab, a humanized monoclonal antibody (mAb) specific to RANKL. The assay was validated as fit-for-purpose and found to be accurate (<115% interbatch accuracies) and precise (<15%, interbatch coefficient of variation) across a range of 3.13-200ng/mL RANKL. Commercial enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kit was not able to determine the total RANKL because interference by denosumab decreased recovery. In contrast, the antibody drug had less effect on the LC-MS/MS method. The method now provides a bioanalytical platform for developing other protein-based antigen assays in the early drug stage.